The Scarf Unravelled
by theAdventurer0815
Summary: A series of disconnected one-shots or short stories featuring (mostly, but not only) the Fourth Doctor, Sarah-Jane and Harry. Rating applies to all chapters/stories. Genre may vary, but usually fluff with varying degrees of humour. There's a summary and character list at the beginning of each chapter.
1. The Doctor Doesnt Dance

==== ==== Sarah-Jane: **The Doctor Doesn't Dance** ==== ====

 _ **SUMMARY:** { Sarah tries to persuade the Doctor to dance with her… [Sarah, Fourth Doctor]}_

There was nothing quite like a celebration after a day saved successfully. Or a world, as it were, in the case of Sarah Jane and the Doctor. You would hardly guess it by the architecture of the building they were in or by the faces of the people surrounding them, but this time they had found their way to the late 22nd century on Earth. Though it wasn't all that different from the 20th, or at least the ballroom wasn't. There were just a few more cultures around, and the fashion was, obviously, rather fancy compared to the well-known Seventies. Sarah enjoyed it nonetheless. Just for the occasion of the festivities, she had borrowed herself a contemporary dress. Immensely pretty, that one, in shimmering red and white colours, surprisingly comfortable, as well and just about the right width and length to move around easily.  
As the Doctor and she entered, a very lively kind of music was playing and various couples had already moved onto the dance floor.

"Ooh! That looks like fun!", exclaimed Sarah right after the second good look. It most certainly wasn't a waltz, but a style of dance way beyond her sense of modern. Not too modern for Sarah not to learn it within a few minutes, though, she figured. Now all that she needed was a dance partner. A few glances were directed at her, she knew, because their latest adventure had made her and the Doctor a bit of a local celebrity, but there really was just one person she wanted at her side. She raised her head to look at the man next to her. "Will you dance with me, Doctor?"

He chuckled, amused that she even considered he could be up for it.  
"Oh no, I'm not in the mood for dancing.", he said, shaking his head.

"Oh, when are you ever!?", complained Sarah. She had almost expected the answer, if not feared it.

But as though he relished in her annoyance, he just kept grinning into her face.

"I just don't dance, that's all.", the Doctor attempted to explain. "Can you imagine the damage these long limbs could do if they moved any faster? No, I'm afraid dancing isn't for me."

"If Harry would be here, I bet he would dance with me!", argued Sarah.

"If Harry would be here, I would gladly ask him to dance with you.", replied the Doctor. His answer was almost too simple. But just for her, he suggested an alternative. "Now, don't let your fun be spoiled by me, Sarah. Look, there are plenty of other people willing to be your partner!" He nodded towards the people – young men mostly – looking her way. There was really no point in arguing with him.

Oh, why did he always have to be like that? At times like these, Sarah felt as though he didn't understand how much joy it was to do things _together_. Saving the world was often fun enough, but it was not actually meant to be fun.  
"All right. But don't come to me after you've changed your mind.", she gave in reluctantly.

"I very much doubt that I will.", responded the Doctor and walked away to look for company elsewhere.

With little other option left to her – downright sullen, you might say – Sarah scanned the area for the next, somewhat pretty guy willing to join her on the dance floor. It didn't take long for her to find someone who was also just waiting for a partner to come along. It was eventually a blonde, glasses wearing man in a pin striped suit, barely out of school by the looks of him, whom she took with her to the dance floor.  
And she tried to dance. Honestly, she tried her very best to enjoy it, but there was only so much she could do. But something about it, whether it was the rhythm of the music or the skill she was lacking, Sarah just couldn't make the dance work. Worse was only that her partner failed to cope with her futile attempts, and instead of avoiding her misplaced steps, he kept stepping on her toes by accident. More than once Sarah had to bite her tongue in order to not shout at him for hurting her feet, but she knew it wasn't really his fault if she couldn't keep up.  
But then he hit her toes for the last time! The pain caused her to stumble back, and, dangerous as her high-heels already were, she broke off a heel and twisted her ankle. As Sarah's leg gave away and she fell to the floor, the pain of her toes was quickly replaced by the much worse stinging from her foot upwards into her leg. Whereas she had been able to remain remotely polite so far, her entire politeness was suddenly forgotten. "Ow! Watch it!", she barked at her partner, who was apologizing and apologizing again. He didn't even have the backbone to remind her it wasn't his fault! Sarah was so upset, and equally disappointed, that she smacked away the hand who meant to help her back to her feet. "Shoo off! I've had enough!", snapped Sarah while she scrambled back to her feet, missing heel, hurting ankle and all. It had been her decision to dance, and then she could very well deal with the consequences of her decisions! No help needed!

By the time she staggered over to the tables nearby, she was utterly frustrated.

Meanwhile, the Doctor was having a jolly nice chat with a couple of historic figures from the future. At least that was who Sarah thought they were as she approached them, looking about as beaten as she felt. She stopped next to her friend without announcing herself.

"Ah ha ha! I always told him not to fly too close to that moon!", the Doctor told one of his new acquaintances as he laughed with them. It took a couple of seconds before he noticed the presence of his companion. "...Sarah?", he wondered about her reappearance.

"Hmpf." The young woman pulled the next empty chair close and sat down without an explanation, and without the need to introduce herself to the strangers. Sighing, she cast a glance over to her friend.

"What's the matter? You're done already? Did someone step on your toes?", asked the Doctor, almost worriedly.

"Yes indeed, and I've twisted my ankle, too.", she answered, but couldn't let him have the fun of being right about the dangers of dancing, and whatever else he imagined now. Honestly, if still somehow possible, she would have wanted him to be jealous for not having joined her. "But mind you, I've had my fun, thank you very much!"

The Doctor chuckled, mocking her sullen mood. Yet he was caring enough to welcome her to his little discussion group. "Would you like a drink?", he asked, then ordered albeit her nod must have been barely visible. "One tonic for my dear friend, please!"

The evening passed slowly for Sarah, who, thanks to her mood, could hardly find any pleasure in the Doctor's scientific and historically important talk with the two men, whom he considered the _'Leonardo Da Vincis of the_ _22_ _nd_ _century'_. For the most part she just sat there quietly, listened and felt otherwise pretty much out of place. So naturally, the time dragged on and on, and knowing the Time Lord rather well, he wasn't one to get tired just because it was getting late… Unlike his company, though. Lucky for her!  
By the time his new friends decided to leave, and, in turn, so would the Doctor and Sarah, the pain in Sarah's ankle had grown worse. She would have expected it to hurt only if she tried to balance on the foot, but now she could also feel it while she was just sitting there. And as she attempted to get to her feet to walk together with the Doctor back to his space craft, the stinging was suddenly so bad she couldn't even stand on the leg! Despite her best efforts, her foot just seemed to give away. It was more easy if she balanced on the other leg, but like this, she wouldn't make it to the time machine. Thankfully, the Doctor watched her struggle and was quick to offer his support. With his arm around her waist and hers around his shoulder, they managed to walk back to the big building's grand entrance – and it was, literally, painfully slow.

Could it get any worse? She shouldn't have wondered. "Oh, just my luck, is it…?"  
It was pitch-dark outside, cold, and raining.

As if her mood wasn't worse enough… Sarah just wanted to give up completely.  
When she and the Doctor stood at the top step of the entrance stairs looking at this unpleasant weather, she lowered herself by his arm onto the stone ground. "I think I'd rather stay here and wait for a better day...", she sighed.

"Are you sure about that? It's still 7 more hours and 32 minutes until sunrise, approximately...", argued the Doctor, and, judging by the tone of his voice, he thought that Sarah meant it seriously.

"Yes, I'm sure..." Sarah played along, hoping that maybe, he would finally get it if she pushed the joke further. But then another thought crossed her mind and she looked up to him. She had to raise her head even higher than usual in the attempt to meet his gaze all the way from the ground. "Unless, you could bring the TARDIS here...?", suggested Sarah.

"I'm afraid I couldn't.", he answered with a sorry look. "It's horrendously difficult to manoeuvre her in a distance of less than three parsecs."

Oh what good was that! She didn't even know how far _'a parsec'_ was! With another sigh, she leaned onto her elbows, head in her hands, as the Doctor sat down on the cold stone steps next to her. He eyed her with light worry. "Still, we should get you to the TARDIS as soon as possible. Your ankle could be inflamed.", he mused, before looking back up at the blackened night sky. "But in your state, walking there will take forever..."

She wasn't looking forward to that… But Sarah knew she had to get there, one way or another. Her ankle was burning quite badly now and rubbing the sore foot didn't help, either. "Are there any more good news?", she asked. Purely ironically, of course.

The Doctor smiled at her widely, as optimistically as only he could be when she was feeling so down.  
"Yes, there are.", he said, then reached into his coat pocket. "Here, take this." Before she knew it, he had pressed into her hands his umbrella.

It was the shabbiest, foldable black umbrella you could ever imagine. Torn and bent in all places. How this thing was capable of keeping anyone dry was a miracle. Besides, as long as Sarah and the Doctor remained under the building's roof, they were safe from the rain, anyway. "What would I want with that?", she asked him.

"You can keep us dry while I carry you back to the TARDIS.", offered the Doctor and knelt next to her with slightly opened arms, just in case she accepted the offer.

Sarah didn't even reply. She just smiled gratefully and nodded, then reached for his shoulder to pull herself closer while he picked her up with such ease as though she was a doll and not a living being. Half an hour earlier she would have rudely refused, but now, not only was it necessary, but with his crazy smile and innocent attitude, he had charmed his way past her frustration. In the end, the care for each other would always bring them back together. With one of her hands, she was holding herself steady by his neck, and with the other she kept the broken umbrella over their heads.

As he marched out into the dark streets, somehow not a single drop of water reached their faces.

It was a miracle.


	2. The Good Fairy

==== ==== The Doctor: **The Good Fairy** ==== ====

 _ **SUMMARY:** { The Doctor wakes from unconsciousness with a different kind of expectation. Originally written in summer 2016, when I first watched The Face Of Evil. [Fourth Doctor, Leela]}_

When his wits came about – and they usually did so as fast as they had left him – the Doctor's head shot up from his lying position on the floor. "The hypothesis was wrong!", he called out, barely aware of where or when he was now. The one thing he was very aware of, however, was what he had done that had led to him having been overpowered and knocked unconscious once again. Oh, it happened much too often, didn't it? A pounding headache and loss of strength quickly forced him to immediately lie back down again, and he was given some more time to gather his assumptions about the nature of his misfortune and what kind of events he had missed out on.

"Oh, knocked out again, was I?", he said to himself and pressed a hand against his forehead. He was definitely still alive – that was a good thing! And what was even better, was that he could trust his companion to look after him until he was fully recovered. Like she always did, unasked, but appreciated nevertheless. A smile began to spread across his face. "Say, how long was I out?" He waited only a short moment, and as no immediate answer came, he decided to answer for himself. „No, wait! It's not important, Sa-"

"You were out for two days."

The voice that suddenly addressed him was not unfamiliar, but not the one he had expected. The Doctor could feel the smile fade from his face as he tore his eyes open. Leaning over him with a curious look on her face was Leela, the Sevateem warrior woman. Right, he remembered now… and carefully brought his smile back to his face. "Oh, hello!", he greeted her. She didn't deserve to be looked upon like a disappointment. It was his fault after all, that, in his confusion, he had been set back by a few months.

"Who or what was that, that you called for, in your sleep?" The savage woman asked, all the while she was nibbling on a piece of chocolate.

He could go for some sweets, too, he thought, before passing the question back to her. „I called for someone?", he wondered aloud, and Leela simply nodded in response. It didn't take long for him to think of an explanation. "Oh... I suppose, it was just some sort of good luck incantation."

He sat up on his elbows, but Leela raised a hand as if to stop him from getting onto his legs too quickly. "But haven't you been saying all this time that there is no such thing as magic?" Obviously she was confused by the sudden change of mind concerning the matter, but the Doctor reassured her in what he had taught.

"Of course, that is still true.", he replied, "But we are allowed to believe in the good fairies if that is what gives us hope. Every once in a while, anyway." The Doctor patted her shoulder and gave her a big grin, then used the moment of her temporary puzzlement to get back to his feet and slip away. He knew that she probably hadn't quite understood what he had just told her, but it was for the better. Before she could focus her thoughts to form another question, the Doctor had already left the room.

„A good fairy, she was, indeed...", me mumbled to himself as he walked away…


	3. Short-Circuited

==== ==== Sarah-Jane: **Short-Circuited** ==== ====

 _ **SUMMARY:** { A kiss on the cheek causes an unexpected reaction… (Just cute, no romance.) [Sarah, Harry, Fourth Doctor]}_

"And finally we're off!", exclaimed the Doctor as the time rotor on his beloved machine set into motion. "Goodbye, you poor, hungry, savage beasts! I know, it's a shame we couldn't stay for supper!"

"No shame at all if you ask me...", added a panting Harry Sullivan and Sarah smiled at him approvingly.

The three of them had only just made it back to the trusty, and thankfully, impenetrable time machine, after being hunted by monsters once more. As usual, it had been a close call. They almost would have torn Sarah to bits! Harry had been a little luckier, but just because his name had not appeared on the creatures' menu did not imply that he had not been running for his life. Eventually, the Doctor had come to their rescue, and like many times before, he had risked his own health in the process, but that never seemed to bother him.

"I really ought to thank you, Doctor. If it wasn't for you, the two of us would be nothing but minced meat now!", Harry told the Time Lord after finally catching his breath. At this point, the Doctor was already quite busy with the controls to get the time machine on the right track back home.

"Oh, please! Please!" He held up a hand, signalling the naval officer to stop talking, but could hardly be bothered to glance over to his companions. "No speeches of gratitude, Harry!"

But the man in the buttoned navy blue jacket exchanged helpless looks with Sarah. He sighed, shrugged and let his arms drop to his sides, seemingly disappointed that his honest gratefulness was not being accepted. Although he opened his mouth to tell her about it, he stopped himself from it when Sarah spoke first.

"I know how you feel...", she quietly told him. She knew the Doctor well enough by now to guess that keeping his companions in good health was something he wanted them to take for granted. Although he rarely ever mentioned it, they were important enough to him so that he would never just leave them to face deadly danger by themselves. But the fact remained that Sarah and Harry could hardly repay all of his good deeds. Every once in a while they had a chance to save him from something in return, but if you were aware that death was hardly ever a final fate for a Time Lord, you might find the worth of their rescue attempts somewhat debatable.

"He's heard it far too often, hasn't he?", Harry wondered, but had to realize that there was nothing he could do to make himself, or Sarah for that matter, heard.

As they looked over to the Time Lord, he was angrily punching buttons on the console. "I don't believe it! The spatial geometer is on the blink again!" Much too busy to indulge in a conversation with his friends, as it seemed.

But that gave Sarah an idea. She always enjoyed to act a little silly around him when he wasn't paying attention, and just in that moment, she knew how she could tell him _'Thanks!'_ without using the worn out words.

Harry next to her just crossed his arms and shook his head at the Doctor. As it appeared, he had completely given up on the subject already, but Sarah tapped his shoulder. "Watch this!", she announced to the medical officer and winked at him, before she walked over to the older man standing at the hexagonal console. Right as she had expected, the Doctor was ignoring her presence as though she wasn't even there. "Doctor!", she tried to catch his attention.

No use, he was just reading dials and flipping switches as usual. "What is it, Sarah?", he replied without looking at her, but Sarah insisted to be looked at.

"Doctor...!" This time, she tugged at the sleeve of his coat, and finally he turned around.

"Hm?"

The fact that he didn't appear to be upset with the interruption told her that there was nothing seriously wrong with his trusty space craft, which brought a bit of relief along the way. Since she was not telling him what this was about, he might have expected her to look worried about what he was doing, but she was not.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Sarah struggled to hide the mischievous glint in her eye. With a gesture she told him to keep quiet, but waved a hand for him to come closer. The man was just too tall! Even standing on tip-toes and wearing high-heels, Sarah barely reached up to his neck.

He looked at her perplexed and then glanced over to Harry, who was just shrugging back at him. His unfamiliarity with human interactions showed in the simple fact that Sarah had to perform the gesture again until he eventually – finally – understood that she wanted to whisper something to him.

Or that was what she wanted him to think. Once his face was in proximity, Sarah pulled herself up further by his shoulder and as quickly as it was unexpected, she planted a light kiss on the Doctor's cheek. Then, after she had dropped back on her heels, she decided to add an explanation, just in case he might not know what to make of it. "That's for looking after us, Doctor.", she told him smilingly, but instead of a reaction – or any reaction for that matter – the great Time Lord was just blankly staring into space. Eyes wide, mouth slightly gaping open, but completely unmoving. Not quite unlike a deer in a car's headlights.

Sarah waved a hand in front of him. "Uhm..Doctor?" Still no response.

"I say!", exclaimed Harry all of a sudden and stepped closer. "You appear to have short-circuited the good fellow!"  
He was smiling, yes, almost laughing at the strange situation. Only as Sarah turned around and looked at him, she understood how hilarious it really was. "A brain a thousand times more efficient than the human's, but you've shut it down in the wink of an eye, old girl.", added Harry, nodding at her.

She couldn't help but begin to giggle. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Doctor!", laughed Sarah and patted the Time Lord's arm. There had been so many reactions she would have expected, but as always, the man remained unpredictable. If she had known that a little bit of human emotion would be too much for him, she might not have done it.

After what seemed like a small eternity, the Doctor finally moved again. He blinked several times, obviously confused still, and straightened up while looking about the console room.

"Are you all right, Doctor?", asked Harry and was shot a short, perplexed glance in return.

"Yes, I, uh...", started the Doctor, but fell flat on words somewhere down the line. Again he blinked, so strangely confused about what had happened to him. He cast his gaze at Sarah, who was grinning back at him like the happiest of creatures. Needless to say, he couldn't stand the sight of her face for very long since he was obviously lacking the necessary understanding to why she was smiling like that. As he averted his gaze and turned back to the controls in front of him, he hastily said: "Your… uh-hm, gratitude has been noted." The words were almost lost in his feigned clearing of the throat!

Sarah could hardly believe it, but instead of being angry at her for causing such a mess in his otherwise already chaotic head, he seemed almost embarrassed, shy! She leaned forward trying to catch a glimpse of his face, wondering whether he might blush, but he wouldn't let her see. It was so unlike him, and that only caused her to grin even wider.

Then, as if nothing ever happened, he looked back up – serious as usual, not a trace of a stray emotion remained in his expression. "Now, never mind that!", he called out, "Where were we heading again? The Earth? Yes, the Earth!" The Doctor walked around the console, away from Sarah, to check on some of the time machine's readings. "Where to, Harry?", he asked into the room.

But his two companions were looking at each other and still chuckling, grinning at him like he had told them the best joke of the day.

"Would you two kindly stop it?"


	4. The Tale Of Two Half-Wits (TOrdPeople)

==== ==== Harry: **The Tale Of Two** **Half-Wits** ==== ====

 **SUMMARY** : _{ Th_ _is_ _scene_ _is_ _set during_ _'_ _ **The Ordinary People**_ _'_ _Ep3_ _,_ _and_ _plays_ _shortly after Harry's and the Doctor's misadventure at sea._ _Due to the main story setting, the Doctor_ _believes himself to be a human_ _._ _Note that unlike the re-telling in Ep 3, I decided to move this scene to a public location and set it to a later time of day._ _[Harry, Fourth Doctor]_ _}_

It was the late afternoon of a Saturday when two visitors entered the _"Sel de la Mer"_ \- a little tea house, pub and restaurant – all rolled into one – that was located not too far off Brighton harbour. The strangers were dripping wet, and with each of the steps they took further into the room, little puddles of water were forming underneath their feet. You might be led to believe that they had just stepped out of a heavy rain shower, but despite the overcast sky outside and the chilly temperatures, not a single drop had fallen all day.

The sea, however, was always wet, and rough, and unforgiving in terms of mistakes, as Harry knew. He was feeling miserable thanks to his cold clothes sticking to his body and the strong smell of salt that was coming off them. Even though his former sailing instructor had given him a large wool blanket to keep himself warm, the icy winds had pricked him during the short walk from his car to the pub. Those were the perfect conditions to turn acute hypothermia into something more serious.  
There were only two things which lifted Harry's mood slightly. Firstly, there was no one else inside of the pub besides them and the owner, old lady Jackie, so he did not have to endure the odd glances.  
Secondly – and, more importantly – the Doctor was just about as miserable as he was. _'Serves him right!'_ Harry thought sullenly. Without turning his gaze, he knew the slightly taller man was standing next to him. The sea had tamed his unruly mob of long curls, which were now sticking wet to his face and made him look a bit like a doused poodle. He, too, had been given a wool blanket, but even though he held it tightly wrapped around his shoulders, it had absorbed too much water already to be of any further use.

" _Mon dieu!_ Don't you look like something the cat dragged in?", the older lady who owned this place greeted them. She was a woman beyond her Fifties, sturdy built and what you would call a little rough around the edges, after running this place for god knows how many years. Although she had grown up in France, she had fled to England during the second World War, married a British sailor and then opened the " _Sel de la Mer_ ".

That was the story that Harry had been told by the locals during his time with the Royal Navy, and he even remembered that her real first name was Jacqueline, but after so many years on the British coast, and having been worn out by the tongues of so many sailors passing through her pub, the regulars had resorted to calling her _Jack_.  
"Good day, Jackie.", the medical officer eventually responded to her, before walking over to the bar made from well-worn wood. On one of its ends sat a black-and-white television set that was playing some sort of sci-fi programme, but the sound was turned off, so no one was paying attention.

The Doctor was following him and looking about himself with interest. He probably thought the layout of the place was a bit curious. There were three big rooms, whose ceilings hung at a different level, but nonetheless the walls between them had been removed to create one very long room that could serve multiple purposes. In the section to their right, there was a big, lit fireplace used to heat the whole of the pub. Its warmth was one of the reasons why Harry had decided to stop here after the mishap at sea, rather than to drive the long way home.

"Is that you, Sullivan? Has the Royal Navy brought you back to us?", Jackie wondered aloud as she curiously eyed the two men.

"Afraid not. It's a mere coincidence this time.", responded Harry with a weak smile.

The woman nodded into the Doctor's direction, who, so far, had not spoken a word. "And who's this you've brought with you?"

The former time traveller pried his eyes away from the pictures of guests and local celebrities hung on the wall behind her, and finally greeted the pub owner with one of his cheerful smiles. "The name's Tony Smith.", he introduced himself quite briefly. "How do you do?"

"Oh, Ca va.", replied Jackie nonchalantly.

Harry resisted the temptation to roll his eyes at the Doctor's fake name, and although he was forced to keep his quiet, he decided to make a small correction to his introduction. "...That's _**Doctor**_ Smith, actually."

The pub's owner turned back to the stranger before her. "Oh! A doctor like our good Harry, are you?", she asked.

"Like this clumsy oaf?", the Doctor had a dig at Harry on the first opportunity given and drew a very distinct line between them. "Oh no, my doctorate is academic."

Harry rolled his eyes after all and breathed out his frustration in a huff. Lucky for him, the barkeeper was on his side.

"The academics, pah! All brain, but no muscle.", Jackie commented snidely, but the Doctor remained just as upset as he had already been. "Say, have you ever been to the sea?"

" _ **T**_ _ **O**_ the sea? We've been _**IN**_ the sea, and rather recently, too, as you might have spotted.", he just said.

She smiled at him teasingly. "And? Was it too rough for you, _garçon_?"

"No, but someone's skull was too thick.", he handed the insult straight down to Harry.

"For the last time, Doctor; It was your fault, not mine! Besides, we've discussed it already well enough, haven't we?", he glared back, insisting on his opinion. They had been over whatever went wrong already a dozen times on their way back to the harbour, and Harry was not interested to get upset again. If the Doctor would not see reason, at least he had to keep his calm. Before he had to listen to some argument in response, the medical officer turned back to the place's owner. "Make us two cups of steaming hot tea, will you, Jackie? And, would you mind if we hung about your fireplace for a while?"

"Not at all, Sullivan. An admiral's booked my pub for a celebration this evening, so we're not actually open, but feel free to make yourself at home until then." She gave him a warm-hearted smile.

Thinking that it was better to pay in advance than to forget about it later, Harry pulled his wallet from the pocket of his jacket. Although he was very glad not to have lost it to the sea, he looked slightly surprised as a puddle of water dropped out on opening it. The Doctor, upon watching this, quickly produced a few coins from his pockets, yet only along with the papier mâché remains of a handkerchief.

However, Jackie refused to accept the money offered. "The tea's on the house this time.", she explained.

"Thank you very much.", the Doctor nodded gratefully in return, before he and Harry walked over to the fireplace in the adjacent room.

In front of it stood two big, very comfortable-looking armchairs, and the mantelpiece was decorated with ships in bottles, just as Harry had remembered it from his visits several years back during his Royal Navy training. The warmth of the flickering fire inside of the chimney was so pleasant that he was almost tempted to step into it, but because he knew better, he decided to just push one of the chairs a little closer. After removing the blanket from his shoulders, his jacket and neckerchief, Harry hung them over the backrest and finally let himself sink into the chair's upholstery. While the Doctor followed his example, his eyes fell on a new piece of decoration on the wall next to the chimney. Where once hung a picture to protect the wallpaper from light and cigarette smoke, a slightly smaller frame containing a selection of sailor's knots had been put up instead.

Sighing, Harry, leaned forward to warm his hands at the fire. "Can we just agree that it was a stupid accident, and that it's all in the past now?", he asked the Doctor.

"Sure, sure. We can't undo what has happened already.", agreed the other wannabe sailor. He stretched out his feet to the carpet from the other armchair he was sitting in, and wiggled his toes at the fire after having removed his shoes. "But can we also agree that you have butterfingers and better keep them on yourself the next time?"

"I'm not clumsy!", protested Harry immediately. So much for keeping his calm...

"Yes, you are.", insisted the Doctor. His calm voice seemed to mock the medical officer further. "Just ask Sarah about it, she'll agree with me."

As Harry took in a breath to deny the accusation once more, he thought for a moment that, yes, maybe there had been a few occasions in the past which said otherwise. The rockfall on Voga, for example, or their accidental trip to space station Nerva, as well as locking Sarah in a room with hardly any oxygen in it – maybe even his failed attempt to infiltrate Think Tank. Still, nothing that occurred on a regular basis. "Please don't tell me either of you are still upset because of that time I stumbled against the helmic regulator?"

A low chuckle followed in response. "What's a helmic regulator?", asked the Doctor, which reminded the former companion that he had forgotten all of their adventures and could not possibly know.

"Hm… Never mind, Doctor. That's all in the past as well.", Harry gave in, thinking to himself that, perhaps, it might be rather in the future, but he did not intend to ponder about it for much longer.

"So; Let's just agree that we disagree about it.", concluded the Doctor. There was a strange chuckle to his voice as he accepted that more bickering would get them nowhere. "You keep thinking I'm too thick to tie a proper sailor's knot, and I'll insist you're worse than Laurel and Hardy taken together."

"That's fine by me.", replied Harry. He would much rather pour his energy into warming up again than into fighting over this nonsense, anyway.

It was not long until Jackie brought the tea she had prepared, and another pair of dry blankets she had found for them. Harry accepted both offers gladly, even though the cup was almost too hot to touch. Still, the air rising from the steaming tea alone smelled pleasant and warmed his lungs from the inside. For a few minutes, he just sat there and waited for the coldness to leave his body, while the fire was crackling softly.

"...Just why did you want to go sailing in the first place, Doctor?", he eventually decided to ask.

"I thought we were just through with that discussion.", replied the former Time Lord, possibly thinking that Harry was looking for more accusations to make.

"We are. I'm just asking out of curiosity."

The Doctor remained quiet for a little while, pondering about the answer. "Well..", he began with a sigh. "University has become a bit boring recently. Now I'm looking for new, exciting things to do."

For a second or two, Harry wondered whether Sarah already knew about it, before he figured that, if the Doctor was going to quit being a professor, she would be the first to know. "Sailing is rather exciting, indeed.", stated the Royal Navy lieutenant eventually.

"Yes, it is.", agreed the man next to him and chuckled, before admitting: "But maybe sailing isn't for me."

"Maybe not."

"There is something quite fascinating about the sea, though..." The Doctor trailed off as music and voices suddenly rang out from the television set on the bar. The two friends leaned out of their armchairs to see which show had caused Jackie to turn on the sound.

"What's this?", wondered the Doctor.

Harry easily recognized the voice of the presenter after having watched the show occasionally on Saturday evenings at home. He considered himself to be one of those people who could enjoy a bit of light entertainment. "It's called _The Generation Game_. It's a show in which families compete for prizes.", he explained to the man, who was still, despite his new set of memories, half-alien to this planet.

Seemingly, the programme had piqued the Doctor's curiosity, because he decided to get up and turn his armchair sideways, so he could watch the television from his spot at the fireplace. After wondering for a moment whether it was worth it, Harry decided to watch the show with him. There was nothing better for them to do while they waited for the fire's heat to seep through their clothes, anyway, and he had to admit, Bruce Forsyth was a riot!

"Why do people participate in this?" A question such as this could only be raised by a man who was not from this planet.

"Why shouldn't they?", replied Harry, plain and simple. "It's all for good fun."

It wasn't long until they were discussing the probability of successfully removing a table cloth from underneath a set of dishes under certain circumstances, and laughing at the half-improvised stage play the contestants put up together with the presenter. For a while, everything seemed so ordinary, that Harry was only reminded of his friend's hidden alien genius again when the Doctor managed to name all the objects on the conveyor belt at the end of the show, in the correct order and with precise description, too…

"You know, Harry, I could have won that cuddly owl with ease!"

* * *

 _Out of the four one-shots which represent events or scenes that were cut from the main story, this one plays at the earliest point in time.  
In chronological order follow: 'Subconscious Memories', 'Caramel Candies' and 'The Lurker'._


	5. Happy Ends For Socks

_==== ==== SJA Sarah: **Happy Ends For Socks** ==== ====_

 _ **SUMMARY:** { The late Sarah-Jane's thoughts on socks. Just plain, ordinary socks doing the thing they do best: go missing. Sometimes, I could swear, life writes these stories for me. This little scene implies nothing beyond the obvious metaphor – anything beyond that is what you decide it to be! [SJA Sarah, past season 5]}_

As much as Sarah-Jane had always wanted to believe it: Aliens were not the reason why some of her socks went constantly missing in the washing machine or the dryer. It was just one of these incredibly normal, very domestic, ordinary problems to have – and it didn't even matter whether the missing sock had once belonged to Luke or to Sky, or to herself. Fate had it out for all of them.

And so, as Sarah Jane emptied the dryer's contents into the laundry basket and noticed the uneven number of socks, she sighed to herself. At this rate, she would have to buy bundles of new socks sometime soon. But it was not just the tediousness of having to buy something as useful as socks which made her sigh. There was just something about a sock becoming separated from its matching counterpart which made her feel sorry for it. Not actually sorry, of course, but just a fleeting moment, a thought of _'Oh, maybe I'll find the other one later.'_ and _'I shouldn't be bothered by this,_ _but I am._ _'_

Still in the laundry room of her house, Sarah-Jane decided to sort out the matter right here and now, and folded up each pair of socks until only the lonesome one remained. With the sock in hand, she thought a moment about where she had seen its pattern before. In her sock drawer, of course, but it also seemed to her that she had lost another one of these only recently. Thinking to herself _'It's worth a shot.'_ , Sarah-Jane decided to consult her drawer for orphaned socks. Yes, that faint hope of being able to find each sock's counterpart again – or to match them with a new companion – had caused her to make space in her sock drawer for all the singles. Although she had kept telling herself that she would be able to pair two orphans with each other at some point, so far, none of them had ever matched up. After all you could say, very literally, that they just weren't made for each other.

So, Sarah-Jane already half-expected to merely add another one to her collection, but this time out of many, it was a bit different. Right on top of her stack of unfolded, orphaned socks, laid the matching counterpart to the one she held in her hand.

A smile crossed her face. "Sometimes, there's a happy end, after all...", she said to herself quietly, while folding the two socks together. They matched perfectly.

And then she wondered about that tiny spark of happiness inside of her, caused by something as trivial as a sock. A lonely, little sock – lonely no longer. It seemed that her subconsciousness had picked up on the metaphor long before she had.

The voices of the guests she had temporarily left to themselves drafted upwards from her living room into the bedroom she was standing in. One of them was robotic and spoke with great precision. The other one rich, with a lovely dark timbre, currently complaining about losing a game of chess.

Sarah-Jane held the folded pair of socks up to her face to take in the flowery smell of the washing power and the lingering warmth of the laundry, and decided to just be happy for the moment.

Yes, sometimes, there was a reunion. And not just among her socks.


	6. The Lurker (The Ordinary People)

==== ==== Sarah-Jane: **The Lurker** ==== ====

 _ **SUMMARY:**_ _{ Sarah and one of Clara's time echoes are attacked by a strange figure at night and the Doctor winds up regretting a prank. This was originally written as a short Halloween story set late during Episode 3 of '_ _ **The Ordinary People'.**_ _Ironically, the first draft was also written before work on the main story began. [Sarah, Clara, Fourth Doctor]}_

* * *

It was not even very late yet when Sarah left the university office. But at this time of the year, half past seven in the evening meant that it was pretty dark outside already. The autumn weather was all around her, too. With its ice cold winds and clouded skies. Not a single star was visible tonight.

Even though Sarah was capable of looking after herself just fine, she was glad when Clara had joined her on her way across the campus area. She did not know much about her, other than that Clara visited quite a few of the same courses as she did, among which was one of the Doctor's as well. But she seemed to be nice and devoted to her studies, and if Sarah had just a little more time to spare she probably would have enjoyed to get to know her better.

Just now they were walking down a corridor connecting one university building to the next. One side was open to the campus area, but the wall to the other side shielded them from the cold autumn winds and the lights attached to the ceiling above their heads helped to disperse the darkness.

"So, tell me: Are you afraid?"

Clara threw her head around as she asked and her ebony coloured hair swung with the motion. She wore it short, just like Sarah had worn it a few years back before she had come in contact with UNIT and the Doctor.

Sarah blinked at the slightly younger woman. Surely, she was aware that none of them should be afraid of the dark or the cold. They were too old to be scared by the night alone. "Afraid of what?", Sarah was forced to reply.

Clara clutched her messenger bag a little tighter and looked back into the direction they were walking. "Oh, you know. Of that man Dr. Smith mentioned. The one who lurks around the campus at night..." There was some nervous hesitation. "Doesn't it frighten you to think we could be watched by someone right now?"

A chuckle evaded Sarah, although secretly, she agreed with her, because she found herself staring into the darkness with a bit of uneasiness as well. "Oh, that Doctor is a joker. Don't believe everything he tells you. If there was such a man, I would have heard of him before.", she tried to reassure her companion and herself.

The Doctor, whom Clara had called by his earthly name, had recently lost his Time-Lordliness and was convinced now that he was no more but an ordinary university professor. Still, Sarah had witnessed over the past weeks how his original personality was breaking through more and more. Only a few days back he had told her that he fantasized about quitting his job and abandoning his current life to travel the world. And ever since that thought had occurred to him, he had left a lot of his worldly, little problems to her. The scheduling of courses, the preparations for exams, the replying to student's letters. Once, Sarah found herself cursing about how she had offered herself to be his assistant when all she had wanted to do was to keep an eye on the Doctor and his changing state of mind.

"Why are you asking? Are _YOU_ afraid?", Sarah then asked, almost a bit mockingly. Not in a sense of wanting to be mean, though. It was an attempt of challenging the other to show a little more courage.

Clara shook her head vehemently. "Me? No, no I'm not.", she insisted, although she failed to hide her nervousness. Of course she was afraid. Not much, but the thought of being stalked had settled well into her mind, that was obvious to Sarah.

The same thought was on hers, too. But for some reason Sarah was not quite as worried with it. Maybe because she had seen so much on her travels that being stalked by someone like a robber or even murderer seemed rather harmless in comparison. As long as those criminals were humans, anyway.

They walked a little further down the corridor and the glass door leading into the next building came into sight. A soft glow laid behind it, suggesting that the building was still open and that someone was still working overtime at such a late hour. But that faint glow shining through the frosted glass would very soon become the only source of light for the two young women. Suddenly, the light bulbs on the corridor's ceiling overheard turned off with a clicking noise – one after the other. As Sarah and Clara stopped and wondered what was going on, they turned around only to find pitch black darkness flooding the corridor and rapidly catching up with them.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Off went the lights.

Sarah's eyes took way too long to adjust to the sudden lack of brightness. It felt as though the dark had engulfed them and she was glad enough to be able to see and feel her fellow student nearby.

"Ah yes, a blackout! At this hour out of all times, of course!", Clara called out and her ironic remark sounded a little desperate in her attempt to make their situation seem less threatening than it really felt.

Sarah however, tried to find a simple, logical explanation. "Maybe they have turned them off too soon?" When spoken, it sounded less convincing than she had imagined it.

As she turned to look back at her companion, Clara was rummaging through her bag.

"Well, no need to worry!", she told her and brought forth an electric torch. "Because I have this! Ha!" With its light, she sliced through the air while she turned it on as if it was a sword made to cleave through the darkness. And that it did rather well. The younger woman pointed her torch around them to uncover the path that laid ahead of them, just when another noise arose behind them.

It was the sound of footsteps echoing in the distance and another, the sound of something scraping against a brick wall.

In Sarah's mind, the noise brought up the picture of fingernails on a chalkboard, although it was thankfully less unpleasant – even if not by much.

"What's that!?", Clara demanded to know. She pointed in the general direction where the noise came from, but the light of her torch was too weak to uncover whoever or whatever was walking towards them.

Sarah attempted to shrug like the Doctor would, but she knew she was a lot less convincing than him, because she could not keep her calm in the same way. "It's probably nothing.", she told Clara. A very weak response, as she realized. "Just uh, someone else who has gotten lost in the dark?" Her voice was shaking a little. Hopefully, her fellow student would not notice.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clara moving a step backwards and nervously biting her thumbnail while holding the torch with a slightly trembling hand. "I don't like strangers _lurking_ in the dark.", she replied when the noise began to get louder.

Sarah's eyes were fixed at the place her companion was pointing the light at and she felt her hair stand on end. She attempted to reach a hand out to Clara, but since she was not looking, she only touched air. "Let's not turn around just yet..." Her curiosity was stronger than her fear still. Even if it was just to know what it was that they were facing.

Something pushed itself into the cone of light. The figure of a person dressed in a long, black velvet cloak covering the entire body. It might have been a robe instead, but it was so dark that it could have been woven out of the very shadows themselves. There was little way to identify the clothes clearly and even less to identify the person underneath. The vague shape alone, by its size, proportions and movement, suggested to Sarah that it must have been a man. His head remained mostly hidden underneath a hood formed out of the cloak, except for a bit of a white mask visible where Clara's torch was supposed to reach his face. Out of the cloak's side protruded a long and sharp edged object shimmering dangerously in the half light. By its gloss, colour and shape it only could have been some kind of weapon. A machete, most likely.

When the shape of the strange lurker was fully revealed by the light, he just got finished to scrape the corridor's wall with his weapon and stopped as though he waited for the women to make the next move.

Sarah felt her body freeze with fear, every last bit of curiosity wiped from it.

"Can I make a suggestion?" Clara let the words out like a breath she had been holding. "Let's get back inside, all right?"

When Sarah was finally able to tear her eyes away from the strange, ominous figure, she looked towards Clara and nodded. Together, they turned around and began to walk towards the soft glow beaming out of the next building's door. Their steps were fast and steady, yet they were not running. As if walking away from a wild animal, they tried not to give the man any reason to attack them.

But the fear was still in their back. The sound of steps, other than the one of Sarah and her follow student, reappeared behind them and they seemed fast. Faster maybe than their own. He could be catching up.

Naturally, they too walked faster, even if it might have been only their imagination.

When eventually the limit of fast walking was reached, Clara glanced over her shoulder with the torch – and Sarah followed her gaze – only to discover that the cloaked lurker was still after them.

The sight alone was so unsettling that they burst into a sprint to cross the last yards towards the door.

Sarah lunged for the handle and threw her entire weight at it – only to find the door locked and that running into a locked door was quite a bit painful. Her fellow victim to-be was right next to her and had almost hit the frosted glass as well had she not seen Sarah' unsuccessful attempt prior to hers. They turned around to face the lurker because now there was little other choice left to them. Left and right of them were the walls of the projection to the building's entrance, and no simple way to get past their pursuer. Had they not believed so firmly that this had been the right way to go, they would not have ended up in this dead end. And that literally was what it could mean for them now.

With very, very shaky hands now Clara pointed the light at their pursuer, who was still advancing towards them. Slowly, but steadily. The cloaked figure raised its arms and lifted up the weapon, looking like a big black bat about to swallow the two of them whole. At the same time, he wailed like a ghost. Definitely a _'he'_ now; the voice revealed it.

That wailing might have sounded funny had the two women not been so terrified already.

While Sarah-Jane was still trying very hard to think of a way to defend herself, Clara at her side could not endure the fright any longer. Yelling **"** **Keep** **away** **, you!"** , she suddenly stormed towards the man and gave him a good push in an attempt to throw the stranger off his feet.

It did not work. The lurker stumbled, but did not fall. In the wandering half light of Clara's torch – which she quickly turned into a weapon to hit him with now – all that Sarah could see unfold was a scuffle.

She rushed closer to help her fellow student, fearing that she would hardly be able to stand her ground against someone armed with a machete!

After several unsuccessful attempts of getting away from the girl with her unconventional weapon, the stranger finally managed to break free. Almost as if he was unaware of his own strength, he hesitated after he had shoved Clara aside, after she had ended up losing her balance and falling to the ground. The electric torch fell with her, causing a clattering sound on the stone ground. Now the faint light from the building had to do in order for Sarah to overthrow the stranger.

He was preoccupied with Clara, who was not quite as quick to get back on her feet as one might have hoped. Though the man did not look as if he wanted to finish her off – instead, he halted all his movements and bowed over to her, hesitating further still. The machete he kept far away from her like he had to make sure no further harm would be done.

"Oh! I'm so so-" Whatever he had tried to say with a voice muffled by the mask, he could not finish.

Sarah jumped at his back and forced him to swirl around – an instinctive reaction to get her off. And although he successfully forced her to let go, the journalist merely stumbled and was back into a fighting position quickly. She knew she was not strong, but she had to give it her all if she wanted to ward off the attacker. Clenching her fists, she aimed a punch at the height of his ribs, but missed, because the man moved away from her, ducking. Just like this, he suddenly dropped his weapon and lifted up his hands in a defensive manner.

Oddly enough: the machete did not sound like metal, but rather like wood.

"No, wait!", he called out to calm the woman who was now trying to kick his shinbone. "Wait, Sarah!"

Behind them, Clara had scrambled back to her feet and picked the torch back up. The light she was pointing around revealed to Sarah a piece of bronze and orange coloured knitwear around the stranger's neck. This, together with the mentioning of her name, finally caused her to understand what was going on. And although she was gasping at the realization and her eyes grew wider, her fury was not letting up.

Absolutely certain now of the stranger's identity, she opened up her fist in the middle of what seemed like a punch at first, and then took another wide step forward to reach past the opening of the cloak and for the ends of the knitted handiwork.

She gave the short scarf's ends a good yank, knowing fully well that the piece of neckwear was wrapped around her supposedly best friend's neck like a noose.

" **Are you out of your mind to scare us like that, you silly nitwit?"**

As a result of her action, he gagged and gasped for air and immediately brought his hands to his neck to get out of this tight spot. That was also the moment where the safety pin finally gave in and the long, heavy velvet curtain cloaking him fell to the ground. Because that's what it really was: a curtain. And Sarah remembered it now, as one of many that had been taken out of a lecturing hall during construction works. As was to be expected, the man beneath the shroud was that tall, slim and curly haired friend of hers. He was still wearing the same clothes from earlier today; a buttoned shirt and a brown corduroy jacket with elbow patches, together with a pair of flared pants and the aforementioned orange-brown striped scarf; Not the one you would expect. This one was much shorter; just an ordinary piece of neck wear. There was nothing scary about him at all.

"Dr. Smith?!", Clara called out, a mix of surprise, confusion and anger in her voice, all at the same time.

Once the Doctor was able to breathe again, he lifted up the white mask – which he had probably gotten from a student one way or another – to reveal his face. He looked sorry enough, all right, if not even a little distressed after the bit of beating he had gotten in return for that stupid prank of his.

"I'm utterly sorry!", he apologized to both Sarah and her fellow student, "I wanted to give you a fright, I didn't mean to terrify you! You see, because we are approaching _Samhain_ I thought..."

"Oh, you and your wicked sense of humour!", Sarah huffed at him mid-sentence, not wanting to hear the rest of his explanation. When she angrily waved a fist at him again, the Doctor retreated from her acting as though she was the most violent creature in the universe – safe for the grin on his face which revealed that he actually found it rather fun. At his display of backing away crouched and looking, sort of, scared of her, Sarah could hardly stay mad at him for long. Still, she decided to keep playing her part.

"Get out of here or you will have to fill in the appropriation requests yourself!", Sarah called after him just before she quickly went and picked the so-called machete back up. In reality, it was a wooden chalkboard ruler spray painted in silver. Hardly dangerous unless one was to put a lot of force into a swing, maybe. Like a pair of school kids, she chased after the university professor for several yards, threatening him with the lecturing tool she raised above her head. As they ran away, further into the dark areas of the corridor, the Doctor picked the black curtain back up to drag it around with him.

" **Ow! Ouch!** No hitting please! That's a delicate instrument for measuring distances, you know?! **Have mercy!** "

Clara might have seen only the half of it since they temporarily vanished from her sight, but Sarah had, at most, managed to hit him twice, the rest was him pretending to be mauled. By this point, it was all just for fun. The younger student made an attempt to follow them with her torch light but stopped when Sarah Jane returned to her alone. She was chuckling to herself about her own and her friend's childlike silliness and somewhere down the dark corridor in the distance, the Doctor was laughing wholeheartedly.

"I hope you gave him a good beating.", Clara half-asked, half-stated.

Although Sarah tried to hide it, she could barely keep herself from smiling. "You will get a much better grade on your next exam than usual. This, I can guarantee you.", she, as the assistant to the Doctor, told her.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The two of them looked up as the lights went back on.

"Let's get off the campus now, shall we?" Sarah finally allowed herself to smile openly and Clara, as she heard the suggestion, let out a sigh of relief before she nodded.

"I can't wait for it!"

* * *

 _Missing scene 2/4 from **'The Ordinary People'** Ep 3. It is set not too long before the fateful Sunday which marks the end of Episode 3 and since it was always meant to be Halloween special, I never even considered to integrate it into the main story._


	7. Subconsious Memories (TOrdinaryPeople)

==== ==== Sarah Jane: **Subconscious Memories** ==== ====

 _ **SUMMARY** : { Set a day or two after Benton's disappearance in **'The Ordinary People'**_ Ep3 _, Sarah discovers a way to talk to the Doctor's subconsciousness. Missing scene 3/4. [Sarah, Fourth Doctor] }_

For two days now, that is, since Harry's encounter with the people-eating looking glass, the Doctor had been fighting with a common cold. It wasn't dangerous to his health in any way, but the people in his proximity had to suffer his grouchy mood and constant tiredness until he was feeling better. Anyone with common sense would tell him to stay away, to stay at home – in fact, several already had – but he wasn't listening. There was nothing at his home for him. Although he had a place, it wasn't much for living, and so staying there could only cause him to feel worse. No, he wanted to be at work, even if it was a little difficult to make it through the day.  
Sarah would know, because the Doctor wasn't sitting alone behind the locked door of his office. While she was taking care of her work, and some of his on top of it, he was having a much needed nap. Under any other circumstances, she would not allow him to, but having seen him pale, tired, and worst of all, annoyed, Sarah had little intention to argue.

At this moment, the professor was lying, for a couple of minutes already, with his head between his crossed arms on the desk in front of him. It didn't look particularly comfortable, to say the least. Sarah surely wouldn't be able to fall asleep like that.  
Every once in a while she looked up from her paper to glance at him, just to make sure his chest was still rising and falling softly.

It wasn't long though, before the noise of a freight train cut through the silence in the room.

Sarah rolled her eyes and sighed deeply at the disturbance. _"Doctor…_ _!"_ , she said, cautionary in tone, but didn't quite dare to raise her voice. "Doctor, you're snoring again…!" It wasn't in her intention to wake him fully, but just a little, so that he would turn slightly. But he didn't react, and Sarah's louder clearing of the throat couldn't change that either. Eventually, she stood up and walked over to him, hoping that it would make a change if she tapped his shoulder. On an earlier occurrence, she had tried to simply keep working, but knew by now that the distraction was too strong, and aside from that, it would also break the illusion that no one was in the office.

Carefully, Sarah leaned down next to the mob of curls that was sticking out of the folded arms. "Would you kindly move a little?", she asked whispering. As the answer came in the form of another loud snore, she retreated, sighing, before she settled back on her original plan. With her index finger, she poked the man's shoulder repeatedly, until he finally moved. Having seemingly realized what the signal was for, he slightly lifted his head and turned his face sideways before settling down again, which gave him more space to breathe.

Sarah smiled relieved as the snoring eventually stopped. For a few more moments she watched him settle back into deep slumber before she turned around. Yet just as she was about to return to her desk, a quiet moaning caused her to look back.

"You mustn't fire the rocket. Please, you will..." It was the voice of the Doctor. A little bit muffled, but surprisingly coherent for someone who was far away, in the land of dreams. When Sarah looked back at him, she noticed a deep frown forming on her friend's face and his hands clenching into fists. "...destroy most of the Kaled race.", he continued, although the beginning of the sentence seemed to have gotten lost. "You'll destroy my friends along with them."

With eyes wide in disbelief Sarah stared at him. He was talking about the Thal's attack on the Kaled dome…! Something of which he had claimed not too long ago that it was but a part of a bedtime story. Of course she knew it had happened for real, but he had been unwilling to believe otherwise so far. Although she wasn't happy to realize by the sight of his scrunched up expression that he was reliving the moment as a nightmare, it further evidenced that his true memories had never been more than a stone's throw away. Sarah leaned back down to study his expression closely.

"Sarah… and Harry…" There was a small shiver running through him as he, undoubtedly, imagined the death of his friends in the turmoil of Skaro's war. Although his eyes were closed she clearly recognized the guilty look on his face.

Sarah could hardly bear to watch him suffer through one of the worse moments in his history, and decided that, despite the risk of waking him, she should try to get him out of the nightmare. "I'm here, Doctor. It's me, Sarah. We've made it out alive, remember?", she whispered softly to him.

Getting through was anything but easy. Even though he reacted, she could hardly tell which bit of her whisper had made it through or if any had at all. "No, I sent them there… You musn't fire. Please…!", he begged quietly between breaths.

If anything, her words had only caused more distress. She noticed him pulling his arms closer around his face. Sarah sighed in pity, but then another idea crossed her mind. "All right, we won't…", she told him this time, trying to play along to his dream. "Do you hear? No rocket is being fired."

Seconds and again more seconds passed, and at first it seemed as though no reaction would follow. Yet his expression began to ease and his breathing became a little calmer again. After a fairly long wait, he let out a slow breath like a sigh of relief, and settled finally back into a more peaceful slumber.

Although he couldn't see it, Sarah smiled benignly at him.

Suddenly, there was the sound of someone trying to twist the knob of the office door, followed shortly by a knocking.  
"Hello, Dr. Smith? Are you there? Sarah? Sarah Jane? It's me, Clara.", called a female voice. "Listen, I might have gotten myself into trouble with this essay, and I could really use your help!"

Pretending not to be there didn't help much. Clara was too clever, and got along too well with Sarah for the assistant to ignore her. Besides, she was just knocking again. Sarah sighed to herself. Obviously, she did not want to wake her friend, not after the nightmare had finally let up on him and his true self. But he was in enough trouble with his superiors already, and Sarah could not take every responsibility off of him. In fact, he had to learn at some point to carry the consequences himself instead of leaving them to her. So even though she was sighing to herself, Sarah lifted a heavy book of the Doctor's desk and let it, rather rudely, drop back down in front of his face.

It crashed onto the wooden surface loudly enough to jolt the professor awake. His head shot up with a gasp while reaching for the book as if he had to take immediate action against the noise. Naturally, there was nothing he could do.  
" _ **What…!?**_ What's going on?!", he spat out.

In the meantime, his assistant had gone over to the door to unlock it. "Oh, it's just Clara. She needs your help with something.", she explained with a smile before she pushed down the handle.

In response she got an angry glare from the man who knew too well it had been her who had startled him from his much needed sleep. "Was that really necessary, Sarah…!?", the Doctor mumbled grouchily, and then sighed heavily, annoyed by the effects of the illness. "...I could swear, this wretched cold is going to be the death of me...!"

"It most certainly won't get better if you keep moaning about it!", replied Sarah.

* * *

 _Missing scene 3/4 from **'The Ordinary People'**._

 _At one point I had intended to use this scene to show the connection between the Doctor's state and the light spilling out of the fob watch - but the entire scene was cut pretty early, and, having the choice to either keep this one or the one in which the Doctor calls Sarah up in the middle of the night (both scenes are similar, but serve to show a different kind of progress of the plot/premise), I decided for the latter. Unfortunately, the bit about the fob watch didn't make it into the one-shot, but since you've probably found your way here because of the main story, it shouldn't be necessary to explain the way the watch works a second time._


	8. Caramel Candies (The Ordinary People)

==== ==== Sarah _: **Caramel Candies** ==== ====_

 _ **SUMMARY:** { Set a few days after the Doctor has recovered from his cold in **'The Ordinary People'** , professor Smith joins Sarah and the other students during a lecture in Anglo-Saxon history. **This is the last one-shot from this story!** [Fourth Doctor, Sarah] }_

* * *

It was not the fault of Professor Watergate that Sarah had difficulties to listen to his lecture. It was not even the fault of the subject, even though, admittedly, the medieval age was far from the top of her list of favourite ages on Earth. But maybe it was because she had been right in the middle of said age once, that Sarah had this terrible feeling she'd heard and seen it all before.

Thankfully, she was sitting at the far left end of the lecture hall today, hidden behind two well occupied seat rows, where her lack of attention was not as obvious. Chewing absent-mindedly on her pencil, Sarah could not help but think back on her first adventure in time and wonder if perhaps the good Professor could learn something from her. She didn't think he was aware that the destruction of Irongron's castle had been brought about by the lift-off of a Sontaran spaceship… and, for that matter, she was not so sure he would believe her if she told him, either.  
Surprisingly, it seemed that where there were thoughts of time travel, the time traveller himself was not far away.

The creaking of the lecture hall's door behind the top level of the seats caused Sarah to turn around. Even though whoever was entering was doing it as quietly as possible, the old hinges were always a dead giveaway that someone was being too late again. Except that, this time, the man slipping though the crack of the open door had no reason to be in this lecture hall to begin with.

"And if you examine the patina on this piece of iron closely..." Professor Watergate trailed off as he turned away from his slide show projection and, out of the corner of his eye, discovered the intruder at the top level of the room's elevated tiers. "...Doctor Smith? Can I help you with something?"

The Doctor greeted his colleague with his usual cheerful mood, but gestured for him to return to his work.  
"Don't mind me, Watergate. I'll just be a guest listener for today.", he explained briefly before he ambled down the lecture hall steps looking for a place to sit down. Naturally, it wasn't long until he had spotted his assistant.

But Sarah was so angry with him she could have punched him straight into his next regeneration – even though he had none to spare at the moment. "Don't you dare to sit down!", Sarah hissed at him sharply as he neared the empty spot next to her at the edge of the seat row. Before he had any chance to disobey her, she moved one seat over.

Suddenly left without his preferred spot in the lecture hall, the Doctor looked at her puzzled, almost as though he could not fathom why she was acting in such a way.

In response, Sarah lowered her brows further, sending even more devastating glares his way. He could not fool her with his act! He knew exactly that he had a lecture of his own to hold at this very moment, and he was not doing it – again! Only today Sarah had been approached by the dean because of his neglect, and since the Doctor had not been around to take the blame – well, you can guess yourself who had to suffer his superior's mood. She was tempted to raise her voice, but didn't want to make a spectacle of them in front of everyone, so she did not issue another verbal warning, but instead lifted a fist by which he could guess what he had to expect if he took another step into her direction.

"All right, all right! I get the hint…!", he replied, though seemed rather unimpressed by her mostly empty threat. With a clueless shrug, he turned back and, eventually, walked away again.

Sarah watched him until she saw him place his hand on the exit door's handle, but did not attempt to listen to Professor Watergate again until she had heard the door fall back into its lock. Unseen by her though, the Doctor had merely pretended to step through and doubled back immediately. He rounded the row of seats quietly along its other side, out of Sarah's direct field of view.

Only when she noticed a movement to her right, she turned her head and saw him sitting down besides her after all. This time he was too quick to be shooed away by her angry glares. Which didn't mean that Sarah was already done with him. Realizing she had no chance to push him off the chair, she pinched his arm instead.

"Ow!" He winced – but not enough to jump back to his feet. "What!? What is it?"

Sarah struggled to keep her voice low. "Get back to your own lecture at once!", she growled. "There. Are. Students. Waiting. For. You!"

"No, there aren't. I was there. I told them to take the time to look into some other field of study today.", he replied, both swiftly and fluently.

"This is not how you do your job!", insisted Sarah before she passed down what his superior had told her. "The dean is _**this short**_ of giving you the pink slip!" But even the short distance between her fingertips could not make the matter seem urgent to him. What upset him, was, at best, the way she was talking to him.

"Oh, come on!", he demanded of her, and his half-feigned cheerfulness had suddenly been replaced by annoyance. "Listen, if you're just in a bad mood, you might just say so. I thought you'd be pleasantly surprised to see me." With that said, the Time Lord-turned-professor finally stood back up – only to move two seats further down the row where Sarah's fury was less harmful. Offended by the rude welcome she had given him, he refused to spare her another glance and decided to concentrate on the lecture instead. Professor Watergate's that was, of course.

"I would have been pleasantly surprised to see you doing your job...", Sarah murmured to herself, now that he was out of hearing range. Since he left her little other choice, she too, attempted to follow today's subject again, but her focus didn't last more than half a minute at most, before she cast another glance at the out-of-place looking professor two seats further. Although Sarah was displeased about not having been able to deliver her full speech, her bristling anger was slowly cooling down. While at first she wanted to fling her pencil at him so she could pick their argument back up, soon she merely wished to exchange _some_ words with him. She had never been able to stay mad at him for long, anyway. And this time especially, because she knew that neither of them was right. A Time Lord was not bound by the duties of ordinary life, after all, and only a human, such as herself, would worry about the consequences of neglect…  
But clueless human that he was now, he might imagine life without a job to be much easier than it really was. She only meant to protect him from himself, and worried about his future on Earth. Even with a false identity, he was no human like any other…

While Professor Watergate's lecture continued, a doodle in the shape of the TARDIS had materialized on Sarah's notebook and she was just about to add the finishing touches to it when a quiet clanging noise caused her to look up.

"Would you like a piece of candy? Take as much as you like, I've got plenty!", whispered the Doctor to the students sitting one row in front of him. He was leaning over the backrest of an empty seat and offering butterscotch candies in a tin can to them. Surprised _"Thank-Yous"_ were returned to him by the students whose favourite professor he had just become.

" _Yup..._ _I_ _t's hard to stay mad at him...!"_ , Sarah thought to herself as she watched him out of the corner of her eye, giving in at the sight of candy. Though she avoided the direct gaze, and biting her lower lip, she first moved her notebook two seats further to the right, and then herself, too. His chuckle reached her ears long before she dared another look into his eyes. She was smiling, because she had a certain feeling that he was smiling, too.

"Say, what became of the Jelly Babies I had bought?", his assistant asked him a split second before she raised her head.

The Doctor was indeed smiling at her, somewhat triumphant that she was no longer trying to talk sense into him, but her unexpected question alleviated his smile a bit. "Oh, about those… I know you wanted to share them with me, but I'm afraid I have given them all away by accident." In contrast to his other mistake, this one he actually was a bit sorry about. As he looked down into the tin can the students had returned to him, only three pieces of butterscotch candy were left. That didn't keep him from offering them to her, though. "Would you like some?", he asked with expectant, blue eyes.

Knowing that it was pointless to refuse, Sarah didn't even try, although she preferred Jelly Babies over caramel in any shape. She took one piece out of the rectangular can and began to peel the wrapper away. "You'd make a terrible parent.", his assistant jokingly said, "Giving away babies to strangers." and popped the blend of soft chocolate and sticky caramel into her mouth.

"And eating them!", added the Doctor, laughing at her remark.

She pointed at the tin can he was about to stuff back into the pocket of his jacket. "That's so much like you, you know?"

"What is?"

"The generosity."

"What gives you that idea?" He shook his head. "I've only begun to carry candy around with me two to three weeks ago."

For a few seconds she pondered about how much of the truth she could tell him before she decided to make use of his addled memories. "You've always had a bag of Jelly Babies on you, back then."

With raised eyebrows he blinked at her, surprised. "You mean, twenty years ago? Hm… I suppose I might have.", he agreed eventually. "I wonder why I abandoned the habit..."

" _You didn't choose to_ _forget about it_ _..."_ , Sarah thought to herself, but merely nodded in response.

" _ **Dr. Smith…!**_ " The professor at the blackboard suddenly addressed the time traveller next to her, having eventually noticed the conversation which was disturbing the quiet in the room.

The Doctor promptly raised a hand. "Present!", he jokingly answered the call, which made some of the students surrounding him chuckle and laugh.

Judging by his expression, the professor for English history was struggling to keep a straight face in front of this studied colleague, who was currently behaving like a first semester student. "Would you mind to discuss your family matters another time?", he asked of the former time traveller.

"...Family matters?", wondered the Doctor aloud.

"Or whatever it is you and your niece are talking about."

"But I don't have a...", he trailed off as he turned his head towards Sarah and saw her lift a hand in front of her face to hide her ashamed expression behind.

She had hoped – sincerely – that that stupid rumour would have remained within the student body, but apparently it had taken on a life of its own after Clara had been done spreading it! Right now she wished she had never thought of such a cheap lie to begin with.

To her shame, not only had the Doctor quickly figured out what was going on, but decided to play along, too. "Ah, yes! You see, my sister would have me killed if I wasn't making sure Sarah is passing all of her exams!", he claimed in front of the professor and students, and, as he turned towards her, asking "Isn't that right, Sarah?" Sarah sunk a few inches below her desk.

* * *

 _Missing scene 4/4 from **'The Ordinary People'** , and with that, the inspiration for additional content from that story is depleted._

 _I think there's is just one sentence in Episode 3 that says this scene has happened at all, which is a shame, because Sarah and the Doctor fighting over a trifle (what is a trifle to him, but not to her) is simply priceless. Besides, the main story had a serious lack of candy in any shape or form!_


	9. Riddle Me This

_==== ==== Harry: **Riddle Me This** ==== ====_

 _ **SUMMARY:** { Take Harry, a puzzle box, the Doctor's insatiable curiosity and see what happens. [Harry, Fourth Doctor, Sarah]}_

It didn't happen very often that the TARDIS team had some time to spare, and, rarer yet, that they were forced to take it.

But this evening on the planet Siberius was one of them, thanks to the heavy rain and thunderstorm which had locked the whole crew of the time machine in a local government building. The weather was always this bad on this planet, the Doctor had told Harry and Sarah, and there really wasn't much they could do about it. Not from where they had gotten stuck, anyway. So, with little other choice left to them but to keep still, they settled in the building's library while heavy raindrops were prattling against the iron shutters outside.

Over tea and biscuits Sarah had just brought up the question of how they were going to pass the time, when Harry remembered having been given a curious little metal cube. Nothing more but a useless puzzle box, the merchant had explained to him briefly before he had pressed the object into the Navy officer's hands.

But even now, as Harry drew it out of his jacket's pocket, there was still something intriguing about it. Perhaps it was because of the curious geometrical markings on each of its sides, or because it was small enough to fit into one's palm. Then again, the thing which intrigued Harry the most about it was that the Doctor had never seen an object like this. Just imagine it! A riddle the likes of which still challenged the great Time Lord's intellect!

"I've solved a number of puzzle boxes already, but none of this design.", admitted the man with the funny scarf as he snatched the cube out of Harry's hand while passing by the armchair he was sitting in. The Doctor brought the curious object up to his eyes, examining it closely from every angle.

"Aha!" A brief look of epiphany crossed his face. "So these are no mere markings, this is where the pieces of the cube were joined together! So that means..."

"Doctor, could I-?" Harry's attempt to interrupt him before he had a chance to solve the puzzle himself remained disregarded while the Doctor tried to twist the halves of the cube against each other.

The wiser man looked appropriately dumbfounded and irritated to find that the solution was not all that simple. "Very well, so that's not it.", the Doctor said to himself, seemingly lost in thought again. "Perhaps it requires another kind of outside influence to be opened? Earth, water, fire, air? A discharge of Tetrillium energy? Or, I might just be able to take it apart using the sonic screwdriver…?"

"Yes, you might, but not just yet.", Harry's voice was suddenly able to cut through the silence which had arisen when the Doctor had reached for the screwdriver in his coat pocket. Now that a surprised gaze was directed at him, the medical officer hurried to add an explanation. "I'd like to solve it myself before you take it apart."

In response, the Doctor raised an eyebrow. He didn't criticise Harry for wanting to try, but as it appeared, he thought that solving the mystery exceeded his capability.

Yet, having seen his expression, the medical officer was twice as eager to prove him wrong. "I'm sure you'll have it open quickly, but once its mystery is revealed, there will be no point in trying again, will there? Let me have a go, and if I fail, I'll give it to you.", Harry suggested.

Once the moment of surprise had passed, a grin appeared on the Doctor's face. "Yes, you're quite right, Harry! I shouldn't do everything for you. Having me around should be no excuse for humans not to think for themselves, as I've been telling the Brigadier time and again." In agreement to Harry's suggestion, he held out the cube to him, but as his companion attempted to take it, he suddenly pulled his hand away again. "However, if you could just let me have it first, say, for about an hour, I could make sure there's nothing… dangerous inside?" His smile had turned slightly sheepish-looking, and perhaps he was aware that his true intentions were shimmering through his words too plainly.

"I'm quite confident I can handle whatever is inside of it.", replied Harry, though he was really thinking that some hours of restraint curiosity were not going to drive the Time Lord mad.

Seemingly having come to the same conclusion, the Doctor nodded in agreement, and finally let the medical officer have the puzzle box. "Yes. Yes, of course.", he said, almost as though he had never suggested something else.

With the cube back in his hands, Harry sat back down in the armchair. While he began to work on the puzzle, the Doctor and Sarah went looking for some interesting pieces of local literature to keep themselves occupied during the rest of the evening. They returned with a stack of books of all shapes and sizes, and some, so Harry noticed, were non-fiction ones about Verron culture. The Navy officer didn't notice immediately, but even after the Doctor had begun to read, every once in a while he was still glancing over to the cube which Harry was turning around again and again, looking for a way to move the components it was made of.  
After two hours had passed, the only thing Harry had been able to do with the curious object was to twist one of its corners by 45 degree. Its secret, however, remained well-protected.

Strangely enough, Sarah, though she hadn't stirred much since she had begun reading, had noticed the Doctor's gazes as well. When Harry looked over to her, she was smiling, amused by the behaviour of her friends regarding such a curious little object. Needless to say, she was curious as well, but with the Doctor and Harry already on the case, there was no reason for her to get involved in it as well.

"You know, Harry, I could give you a few hints…?", the Doctor just started again, breaking all of their feigned concentration.

Harry lifted his gaze off the cube, but he didn't need to reply, because Sarah was faster to chime in. In a second she had folded the book shut and put it away. "Hey, Doctor! I think I saw a chess board on one of the shelves. Would you like to play?"

His latest train of thought interrupted, the Doctor cast a questioning look at her. "I thought you didn't know how to play?"

She grinned back at him. "Well, now's as good a time as any to learn it, isn't it?", she replied, and was off to fetch the board before he could have refused to teach her. Not that he would have. Harry knew it wasn't simple to deny a request from her, especially when she was in a good mood and looking eager to do something.

Thanks to Sarah keeping the Doctor from trying to help him, Harry had some more time to try his luck with the puzzle box, but in truth, he had not gotten very far, and already run out of ideas. Within the following hour, trying to open the silly little cube turned into a frustrating task. But even then, he didn't want to give up just yet, because he was still hoping to see an impressed Time Lord's face if he was to solve the riddle before he could.

Slowly, the evening became night, and the storm was still raging on as Sarah was growing tired, and Harry's eyes were aching from focussing on the little cube for so long. It was the Doctor who decided that his companions should better call it a night after Sarah's turns at the chess board had begun to take long enough to prepare another kettle of tea in the meantime.  
Though he wasn't saying it, Harry gladly gave up trying to solve the puzzle box for today. As he and Sarah left to look for the temporary quarters they had been so generously provided with by the government officials, he abandoned – more by chance than by decision – the puzzle box on the armrest of the chair he had been sitting in during the evening.

What he wasn't aware of at that time, was how the little cube would be teasing the Doctor, the last one left in the library, with its mere presence of unsolved mysteries…

The next morning arrived, and the first thing Harry noticed about it was that the heavy storm had ceased during the night, which meant that they would head back to the TARDIS and leave quite soon. Hopefully after breakfast, he thought to himself before he left his quarters to find Sarah and the Doctor.  
A breakfast had, indeed, been arranged, for all those who had sought shelter in the sturdy old building, but even though it wasn't long until Sarah showed up, there was no sign of their Gallifreyan friend. At first, Harry didn't make much of it, knowing that the Time Lord needed the breakfast as much as he needed sleep – barely any at all – but Sarah had soon convinced him that their common friend would usually be around to keep their company, at least. It didn't took the two of them long to find the Doctor. As it turned out, he was still where they had parted ways the evening before: In the library.  
However, the place was looking a bit different from yesterday… Various tools and open books laid haphazardly scattered on top of and next to the table, and in the centre of it all were tiny pieces of dark metal in geometric shapes, something which resembled circuitry, small crystal pieces and strangely-coloured dust spread all over them.

"What happened here?", Harry gasped. "Did the puzzle box go up in a bang?"

Having finally noticed his friends at the other side of the table, the Doctor lifted his head. In one hand he held a corner piece of what was once the cube, and the sonic screwdriver in the other. "Harry!", he exclaimed, not as cheerful as his greetings usually were. Quite the opposite, he appeared to be surprised to find his two companions awake already. "I'll give it back to you – promised – as soon as I've put it back together.", he said.

Sarah crossed her arms in front of her chest and cocked her head at him. "You've been trying to open it, haven't you?"

"My dear Sarah-Jane, I haven't been _**trying**_ to open it.", the Doctor replied, putting a special pronunciation on the verb.

"Right.", she corrected herself. "You've succeeded."

"I had a lot of time to spare while you've been asleep.", the Time Lord explained further while he made a mediocre attempt to tidy his temporary workplace. "By the way, the storm's over. I saw it when I went back to the TARDIS three hours ago to get the tachyometer."

"We already know.", added Harry, and sighed, feeling deprived of his chance to be cleverer than the Doctor for once. "Well... now that the box's open, why don't you tell us what was inside of it?"

As he got up, the Doctor faced the expectant looks of his companions. He lifted a hand to gesture while he took in a breath to begin his explanation, but instead of speaking, he sighed and shrugged. "Nothing.", the Doctor eventually revealed to them, causing Harry to wonder whether he might be lying – but the disappointed expression on his face looked genuine. "It looks like a puzzle box, but it isn't one.", the Time Lord continued. "From what I can make of its components, it is calibrated to respond to a specific energy fluctuation in the time vortex, and will then create a small bubble inside of which time should remain unaffected by the fluctuation, thanks to a field stabilizer. I believe it's Verron in origin, but I didn't know they had such a good understanding of temporal theory..."

Harry exchanged a glance with Sarah to see whether anything the Doctor had just said made any sense to her. When she noticed his questioning look, she just shrugged in response. "So, it's not a puzzle box, it's a device that does… something?", the medical officer guessed.

"It protects a person from a specific kind of change in their time line.", repeated the Time Lord in simplified form. "But we won't know what kind of change that is until it happens to someone, I'm afraid. I saw the pattern of the fluctuation, but I don't know of anything which causes a disturbance like this. Not yet, anyway..."

"Too bad. I really would have liked to solve it.", said Harry, and saw a smile cross the Doctor's face.

"Well, it was activated before I opened it, so, in a sense, you did.", he explained. "In any case, it's probably a useful little thing, so you can keep it if you like."

Sarah was smiling as well. "After you've put it back together?", she repeated.

"Well, yes… I promised you, didn't I?" After a moment of hesitation, the Doctor began to collect the many pieces of the cube and stuff them into the pocket of his coat, where he already kept so many other curious little objects. "But let's get back to the TARDIS first. Have you had breakfast already?", he asked as he walked past his two companions towards the library exit. "We could stop on Senibos on the way back to Earth. Come on!"

He had rushed past them quicker than Harry could tell him he'd rather not stop again on their way back. "This has been the longest detour back to Earth yet...", he quietly said to Sarah as they turned around and followed him.

As though he had said something funny, she just chuckled.


End file.
